Production ready?

[robjkc]

I know that this project is currently in its alpha stage but I was wondering if that should keep me from using Spring rich-client for building a new point-of-sale application for a large retailer which needs to be installed by mid-2005.

I'm the development lead on this application and our first decision was whether to use Swing or SWT. Even though I had experience in SWT, I chose Swing because of its flexibility. I am now faced with the task of learning Swing, which I find somewhat complicated. I'm a big fan of IOC which is what attracted me to Spring RCP in the first place, and also its integration of other rich client applications. But after trying to learn Spring RCP I found some of the documentation lacking. I might also try a phase approach which I read about in these forums where I could use the IOC, image, and resource management functions of rcp.

Just curious on what thoughts you all might have. Thanks in advance.

[Jurijus Jarmakas]

I think it is ready to use, I like it very much. Lean from the sample app, forum and http://opensource.atlassian.com/conf...+Documentation

and buy Swing Second Edition by Matthew Robinson and Pavel Vorobiev.

If have problems go through the source code.

[robjkc]

Thanks Jurijus! I tend to agree that it is ready also.

I know that there are a lot of years of Swing experience built into this framework. Having worked with and built some frameworks in the past I likened spring-richclient to writing an application using MFC as opposed to using the Windows SDK.

Also reading the Mission of spring-richclient I liked the references to programming to interfaces and the action framework. It's just going to take some convincing to higher-ups who fear the "alpha" term. Another person on the team already mentioned that spring-richclient was alpha to the VP. Any ideas on when it might move to a beta or a full release?

[pdbruycker]

Spring rich is not yet ready to go from alpha to beta stage. There is still a lot of ground for us to cover.
- Window docking has yet to be integrated
- the Settings and Preferences part is not yet finished
- There are still some bugs in the Form part

The documentation has to be updated (I wrote most of it when working myself into Spring Rich, but a lot has changed since then)

Hope this helps,

Peter

[lagcisco]

I would also like to use spring-rcp for production but fear its alpha tag, is there any ETA for beta stage?

[rtsang]

I think even it's in alpha, it already helped me a lot to start coding my new project. This saved me a lot of hours to code such as command action, image resources ...such and such.

[Randy Johnson]

Peter indicated window docking has yet to be integrated. Do you intend to provide interfaces to the previously discussed docking frameworks (i.e. infonode, flexdock, etc)? Will this include any examples?

I have worked with the PetClinic example, AND with Infonode. Both are incredibly exciting frameworks, but I can't begin to understand how to effectively use them together. I understand and appreciate your emphasis on programming to interfaces: does this mean we would add your interfaces to existing Infonode classes to integrate (as an example)?

User snpe showed an example with screen shots of an integration of Rich Client and Infonode, but we never heard any more details.

[rtsang]

I think the docking feature will have an abstract layer and won't tie to a specific vendor?

[Manus]

The documentation has to be updated (I wrote most of it when working myself into Spring Rich, but a lot has changed since then)
Peter

Peter,

I'm a system analyst, team leader, working in a big project that have
very sophisticated Swing interfaces.
After read a lot of posts in a large variety of forums, my team is
decided to use the Spring RCP, even known the actual status of the
project (alpha).

Our 1st draft of client-side application is ready, I did it based on
petclinic code, our app is ready to show and manipulate some of our
domain objects (thanks for Spring RCP).
But of course, our app have some particularitities, for example, the
views that shown set of objects (like the petclin OwnerManagerView)
should be presented outside the main window (like NewOwnerWizard),
should not be modal and should be called from the menu, like a Command. I don't
know how to do it using the RCP in a right way, so I
started to do using pure Swing. Can you show me the steps to do it?
We need this because we have a lot of Registers that are common for a
variety of applications, so I have a "commons" project and each set of
"windows" that manipulate an ValueObject (Show VO list and CRUD)
will be components pluged in the app who wants it. The only one work in
3rd part app will be to configure the command and properties files.
Continuing, in my view that shown set of objects (like OwnerManagerView)
I have a set of buttons to do the CRUD operations. I had build the
buttons using Swing and a few of RCP (like DefaultComponentFactory), but again,
the Spring RCP probably do this in a better way, for example, my "custom button"
that do the Owner creation, could be a command integrated to the menu
(like the petclin File - New - Owner).

After I had studied the RCP code, that to me is hard to understand
'cause a leak of java documentation, played a lot with the petclinic
application, search for forums and the User Documentation of RCP a
concluded the best to me is to write a big set of my app using pure
Swing. However, if the Spring RCP go to have a little more
documentation, specialy in Component Construction and GUI Standards
chapters, certainly I'll be economizing time, not only with in
construction of my app, but also eliminating the future need of refactoring.
Like I'm on this point, I cannot see other way except to ask gentily to RCP
team to increase the User Documentation writing some in the two chapters
that have zero of documentation (Component Construction e GUI Standards).
I'm looking the CVS repository daily and see no activity last weeks. I
also read about you "financial issues" and undestand that you have a
set of priorities, but please, is possible to you to increase the priority
of write a little bit of documentation about this two chapters?

Thanks a lot,

Mauro Ransolin
http://www.wplex.com.br

[pdbruycker]

Mauro,

please give me some time to thouroughly read your post, but I can already say this:

For the moment I'm working on a presentation on Spring-rich (my first presentation ever, :shock: ), and I'm on a tight schedule in my day job (can't live without them :cry: ), but I'll try to "restart" as soon as I can.

These are my priorities (don't know about the other team members):
- documentation (articles + reference docs)
- integration and testing of the settings api
- integration of window docking (infonode, flexdock, ...) by using a common interface

Hope this helps,

Peter